FORTENBAUGH: Skewed rankings undervalue area teams

One thing that always makes you shake your head is this idea The Trentonian is somehow responsible for the fountains of softball misinformation put forth in other publications.

This includes all-star teams in which marginal players are placed ahead of girls with Division I scholarships and the wildly inaccurate state rankings that appear in a North Jersey newspaper.

Completely skewed to favor the North Jersey teams and not even remotely based in reality, those state rankings have long been considered a joke in knowledgeable softball circles.

Remember the year Notre Dame won its first state title and was not even in the top 20 before ending up No. 2 in the state? Ditto for the Hamilton state championship team of 1999.

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Isn’t it amazing how a team that isn’t good enough to be in the top 20 one week, is good enough to be in the top three the next.

Heck, just yesterday a North Hunterdon team ranked 12th in the state came to town to play unranked Notre Dame. So what happened? Notre Dame won, 8-3, with a pitcher who was making just her second start of the year.

Perhaps the most glaring example of inaccurate ratings occurred in 2006 when five Trentonian area teams won state titles, including Pennsbury and Peddie. The local NJSIAA champs that year were Allentown, Notre Dame and New Egypt, none of which were even on the state rankings radar when the season got started.

Don’t get us wrong: this isn’t to say North Jersey doesn’t have its share of good teams. These things also tend to run in cycles and there have been years when North Jersey has done well. But with that being said, the reason the rankings are so worthless is because they ignore where the true strength of New Jersey softball has traditionally been.

Don’t take our word on it. Consider the facts:

Over the course of New Jersey’s 38 years of public school state championships, North Jersey has won 14 Group IV, 17 Group III, 16 Group II, and 14 Group I finals. In other words, the all-powerful North Jersey teams have a record of 61 wins and 91 losses in public school state finals.

The Parochial A bracket is more of the same with South Jersey holding an advantage of 19 wins to 13 losses in 32 years of state finals. So much for that great Immaculate Heart juggernaut. Has there ever been a more overrated team than that?

Parochial B is the one bracket where North Jersey does come out on top with a 19-13 record in state championship games.

So, the next time you have a gripe about the state rankings or an all-star team that is so bad it’s an insult to the players, don’t come griping to us. The Trentonian is its own separate entity and not at all responsible for the ignorance of others in the media.

PARENT OF WEEK

This one goes to the dad who was heard complaining about the coach’s pitch selection while his daughter was being lit up the other day like a 4th of July fireworks show.

“The problem is our dumb coach doesn’t know what pitches to call,” the dad said. “My daughter has a great change-up, but the coach doesn’t call it enough.”

As these things tend to happen, the coach did, indeed, call for a change-up two batters later. The result was a towering shot that slammed into the scoreboard a good 40 feet behind the center field fence.

Unfortunately, this didn’t stop the dad from continuing to talk, though.

“You can’t just throw a change-up at any time,” the dad explained. “You have to know when to call it.”